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Scientific Realism, Perceptual Beliefs, and Justification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2023

Richard Otte
Richard Otte*
Affiliation:
University of California—Santa Cruz
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Extract

If one compares various skeptical arguments about our perceptual beliefs with arguments against scientific realism one immediately notices important similarities. Skeptical arguments about perceptual beliefs are often based on the premise that all of our perceptual beliefs could be wrong. Our experience is consistent with many different states of affairs; some familiar examples are hallucination, an evil demon, and brains in a vat. Thus it is claimed we have no reason to believe that the perceptual beliefs we normally form are true and alternative beliefs are false.

One of the most powerful arguments against scientific realism is based on the claim that our data underdetermines our theory. There exist empirically equivalent theories, which means that there is no observation that could lead us to accept one and reject the other. Each member of a class of empirically equivalent theories will be equally supported by the evidence.

Type
Part VII. Realism
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1990 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1990 , 1990 , pp. 393 - 404
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1990

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Footnotes

1

I would like to thank Davis Baird, Alvin Plantinga, and Fred Suppe for comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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